Less driving, more paperwork

By Matthew Heimer

Save the planet, or save your paperwork? Lately, retirement plans and other financial-service providers have been leaning on customers to do the former, encouraging us to go “paperless” and opt for electronic delivery of account statements and other key documents. AARP recently commissioned a survey to see how account-holders were responding to this effort, and the answer is: Not well. Perhaps not surprisingly, older respondents – those who spent the majority of their lives before the dawn of email, thank you very much – were more likely to say they only wanted to receive paper documents. But even tech-savvy millennial types aren’t ready to abandon print. Two-thirds of younger participants in the survey also said they preferred paper, and in all, only 7 percent of plan members said they’re currently getting their statements in electronic form only.

Ford

Speaking of saving the planet: A separate AARP study, this one by the organization’s Public Policy Institute, speculates that the aging of the baby boomer generation could result in a world (or at least a country) that has less traffic congestion. The authors make a persuasive case that the boomers, more than any other demographic group, have been the Car Generation: Their rise to maturity coincided with the rise of the outer-ring suburb and the two-car family, and since the early 1980s, boomers on average have driven more miles per capita than the average of all other demographic groups. But as the boomers have, ahem, slowed down, they’ve been driving less, with their daily miles on the road having steadily tailed off since about 2001. Authors Nancy McGuckin and Jana Lynott say that trend has major implications for public policy and urban development: They prescribe bigger investments in public transportation, more mixed-use development centered around rail and bus stations, and more attention to the problem of safely transporting older boomers between their homes and medical facilities. (Here’s a suggestion: Build shuttles that look like the 1972 Chevy Impala.)

Are you playing “charity chicken” with your IRA income? The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Saunders reports this week that a surprisingly high number of affluent retirees may be holding off on taking their required annual distribution, in the hope that Congress restores a tax break that would let them donate some or all of that payout to a qualified nonprofit. That’s Saunders’s take on data from Fidelity Investments, which reports that of its 500,000 or so customers who are old enough to be required to take payouts, 54% hadn’t done so as of earlier this month. (Investors 70 ½ or older generally have until Dec. 31 to make that withdrawal or else face a penalty on what they don’t withdraw; investors who hit that age milestone this year have until April 1, 2013.) There’s no telling whether the ongoing fiscal-cliff negotiations will restore the charity tax break or not, but for retirees who are holding out hope, Saunders offers some strategic advice on how much to withdraw and when to withdraw it.

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About Encore

Encore looks at the changing nature of retirement, from new rules and guidelines for financial security to the shifting identities, needs and priorities of people saving for and living in retirement. Our lead blogger is editor Matthew Heimer, and frequent contributors include editor Amy Hoak, writer Catey Hill, and MarketWatch columnists Elizabeth O’Brien, Robert Powell and Andrea Coombes. Encore also features regular commentary from The Wall Street Journal retirement columnists Glenn Ruffenach and Anne Tergesen and the Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Alicia H. Munnell.